The government nominees to the MPC have been shortlisted by a search-cum-selection committee headed by the cabinet secretary with the RBI governor and the economic affairs secretary and three experts in the field of economics or banking or finance or monetary policy as its members.
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Both men worked for the International Monetary Fund and studied overseas, in Patel’s case at the London School of Economics and Oxford University before heading across the Atlantic to Yale for his economics doctorate.
RBI’s second Governor James Taylor (1937-1943) was the first one to serve as Deputy Governor before being made Governor.
Till the government appoints a replacement for Patel as the deputy governor, it will have to appoint one among the three DG – R Gandhi, SS Mundra and NS Vishwanathan – to oversee the critical monetary policy aspect in the interim.
Economists said that if an RBI insider such as Patel was nominated, the central bank’s independence, which has come under pressure in recent years, was likely to be preserved. With the tenure of the present Governor Raghuram Rajan heading to a closure on September 4, the central bank at its helm, has managed to find Rajan’s successor, eventually.
The six-member monetary policy committee will decide on interest rates based on this inflation target. He has been a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution since 2009.
Born on October 28, 1963, Patel received his doctorate in economics from Yale University in 1990 and MPhil from Oxford (1986). He was at International Monetary Fund desk in the U.S., India, Bahamas and Myanmar from 1991 to 1994.
“Patel is an astute economist with a clear vision, who will surely continue to de-risk the Indian economy and strike the fine balance between growth imperatives and inflation management”, he said. Patel was appointed as a non-executive director on the board of Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation in 2005 by the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. He had also worked with several High Level Committees at both Central and State Government level. The Urjit Patel Committee, set up by Reserve Bank of India (RBI) governor Raghuram Rajan, suggested setting inflation targets and accountability on the RBI.
Particularly picked for his expertise in inflation-control.
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Prior to his appointment as the deputy governor, Mr Patel was Advisor (energy & infrastructure), Boston Consulting Group. And lastly, cooperative banks should not be converted into private entities.
